Todos

Todo macros in La Te X are a very helpful way in organizing the document being written. Todos should be clearly visible in the document, and it is helpful to extract statistics (how many todos left before the document is ready?) about your writing progress. I have used the following macros extensively while writing my Ph D thesis.

Add the following to the preamble of your document:

 % use index package to create indices
 \usepackage{index}
 % use color package to make todos jump out in text
 \usepackage{color}
 % start todo list
 \newindex{todo}{todo}{tnd}{Todo List} 
 % macro for todo entries addition
 \newcommand{\addtodo}[1]{\textcolor{red}{[To do: #1]}\index[todo]{#1}}

Use the new macro \addtodo{Update this} in your text, to let the todos appear in red in the text.

Todos will now be generated in a paper.todo file, with "paper" being the name of your tex file. You can use a bash script like the following to report on how many todos are left after compiling the document:

 TODOFILE = paper.todo
 TODOS=`wc -l $TODOFILE | rev | cut -f 2 -d " " | rev`
 if [ $TODOS -ne 0 ]
 then 
         echo $TODOS todos to go before the end:
         cat $TODOFILE | cut -f 2 -d \{ | cut -f 1 -d \}
 else 
         echo "No more todos!" 
 fi